*Clark appears on screen with a laser burn across his forehead.* I really don't know where to begin this. *clears his throat* Myself and the marines aboard the [LN]-LLS-Arleigh Burke got sent into a lost naval Dreadnaught. The Colossus. We had very little intel going in. Myself and the first insertion platoon inserted into the Dreadnaught via a cargo airlock amidships while the second insertion platoon inserted via EVA onto one of the top decks.
When we went in we found the Dreadnaught had no lights running and the interior corridors showed signs of some serious fighting. The only thing that moved where the Maint-Bots which are run on a secondary computer system and require little power. The Colossus by all accounts appeared to be a ghost ship. It was last seen three weeks ago via a long range scan. Now inside the ship there was fallen bulkhead scattered over the place, the gravity systems where only running at 32% of their standard operating levels.
To cover more ground i ordered in another two platoons to help secure the dreadnaught. I split up half of the first platoon into two teams to secure both the Computer Core and the Power Core rooms. Ohms who was the lead technical expert on the team that secured the power-core room reported that the Primary and Secondary reactors where non-operational and there was only emergency power. The Computer Core however was similar but different. looks like someone took a 2 kilogram stick of C-112 plastic explosive and killed the computer core in a big way. The second platoon at this point had not breached the Bridge.
They reported that there was some kind of energy signatures on the bridge, but it wasn't anything known to us. To me it sounded a lot like an incident with another ghost ship a while back. On that ghost ship we found those power sources to be Nomad tech. Myself and a 3 man team from the first linked up with the second platoon outside the Command Center and breached the room with cutting explosives. It was as i thought. Nomad Tech. There was Nomad tech attached to systems on the bridge. It looked like it was powering it.
I ordered my men back to the [LN]-LLS-Arleigh.Burke. We evac'd from the bridge via breaching through the windows and going EVA back to the Burke. by the time i got on board the First insertion platoon had made it back. Then the third and forth insertion platoons came under fire. Don't know where. I didn't see any bodies beforehand until i linked up with them to help them with their withdrawal. At that point we had two marine K.I.As as well as 7 wounded. The attackers looked like some of the crew of the ship but I'm guessing they where infected given they had the weird glow, at least according to the old dossier released from the LSF ages ago on "How to identify a Nomad infected persons" We pulled all our teams back and pulled the Arleigh Burke away from The Colossus.
That's when the real blood bath really began. By the looks of things the entirety of the Forth Insertion Platoon had been infected while searching the ship. I don't know how and where they got infected their recorders are all fried, data no recoverable. They started shooting in the second cargo pod of the Burke. We had a battalion of marines in those cargo pods. It quickly turned into a massacre. There was shooting up and down the cargo hold, mass confusion. We pulled it together and eliminated our former friends and marine who had now been turned. In all we had 182 dead, 77 wounded. We had to enact the Jacobi Protocol. It states that:
Quote:"Any wounded or dead persons as a result of engagement with the species known as nomads are to be eliminated and the bodies incinerated, then undergo full ship wide decontamination at the nearest secure, allied port."
We pulled the bodies of the dead and brought in all the wounded into the Second Cargo pod. Then i sealed it up and vented the pod, spaced every single last one of them. Two-Hundred and Forty-Nine dead marines. Its on my conscience and I'm going to have to live with it. In all my time here in the Navy, I mean Ive lost men in battle before, but never this many. Never had to space a man either let alone my own people under my command. Pushing the button spacing them then ordering the Burke's guns be turned on them to saturate the area with laser fire.
Admiral Baker, at some point I'm going to have to have a off-the-record talk with you about why sending people in blind is a bad idea. Now if you will excuse me i still have another 128 letters to write to the families of the men lost today.
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